Delay time limit on Echo Lab, disappointing

[Architeuthis]

Trying out the demo I was disappointed by the limit of 4.25 beats of time delay.

Would also be nice to have a global delay line editor mode and be able to apply sine or even better, "low frequency random" modulation to individual delay lines at different speeds

[Music Engineer]

Trying out the demo I was disappointed by the limit of 4.25 beats of time delay.

so i guess, you want to set up patterns that are longer than one single measure? i've chosen this one measure (in 4/4 time-sig) plus a bit rather arbitrarily based on what i think, i would want to use. the thing is that each delayline uses an amount of memory that is proportional to the maximum delayine length, so i needed to keep the length limited to keep the memory usage reasonable.

but thinking about it, i perhaps could just dynamically allocate memory as needed. mmhh...sounds like a good idea anyway. i'll note that on my todo-list.

Would also be nice to have a global delay line editor mode

what do you mean with "global"? an editor that changes the settings of all delaylines at once? what kind of parameters would you expect to see there?

and be able to apply sine or even better, "low frequency random" modulation to individual delay lines at different speeds

modulation is one thing that i have in the back of my head too. in fact, the very early betas had it, but i took it out again because it seemed to costly to get it right (i'd need to have fractional delaylines then (interpolation)). we'll see. currently i'm still kind of bogged down by updating the code to the new GUI framework.

[Architeuthis]

Huh, didn't know you responded to this... I'll get back to you with more. By the way, why not increase the delay minimum limit as well? You can get into crazy filtering and karplus-strong territory.

The one thing I do like is the fact that when you move a delay line you get stutter effects. By the way, 1/1 snap is missing

Oh... EchoLab sums to mono.

[Music Engineer]

Huh, didn't know you responded to this... I'll get back to you with more. By the way, why not increase the delay minimum limit as well? You can get into crazy filtering and karplus-strong territory.

echolab is more geared towards creation of rhythmic delay patterns rather than comb-filtering. for that application, i considered sample accurate timing of the repeats as accurate enough. but when we want to go into comb-filtering and karplus-strong territory, then i would need fractional delaylines. but if modulation is going to be included at some stage, i'll have to do that anyway, so the minimum delay limit may then fall as well

The one thing I do like is the fact that when you move a delay line you get stutter effects. By the way, 1/1 snap is missing

yes, that would be a bit too coarse for a grid, so i left it out.

Oh... EchoLab sums to mono.

yep. it's not true-stereo. IIRC, this is because at that time, i wasn't sure how to implement a true-stereo/ping-pong delay (and ping-pong seemed more important to me). maybe i must think about it some more. i think, i even have something lying around already. we'll see

[Architeuthis]

The interface of echo lab is refreshing; you click and you get another delay line that is individually customizable. Amazing. I don't see any reason why Echo Lab cannot be made into the end-all of digital-style delay. It's called Echo Lab for goodness sakes! Let it become the laboratory for echo, filtering, stutter, beat-shifting, reverb, chorus, and flanging effects that it is capable of becoming.